Issues arising from employees and information moving from one employer to another continue to proliferate and provide fertile ground for legislative action and judicial decisions. Many businesses increasingly feel that their trade secrets or client relationships are under attack by competitors—and even, potentially, by their own employees. Individual workers changing jobs may try to leverage their former employer’s proprietary information or relationships to improve their new employment prospects, or may simply be seeking to pursue their livelihood.

How can you put yourself in the best position to succeed in a constantly developing legal landscape?

Whether you are an employer drafting agreements and policies or in litigation seeking to enforce or avoid them, you will want to know about recent developments and what to expect in this area.

Non-compete litigation is typically fast-paced and expensive. An employer must act quickly when it suspects that an employee or former employee is violating a non-compete agreement (also referred to as a non-competition agreement or non-compete). It is critical to confirm that there is sufficient factual and legal support before initiating legal action. Filing a complaint for monetary damages or a request for an injunction can backfire if an employer is not prepared with sufficient evidence to support its request. This Note discusses the steps an employer can take to best position itself for successful enforcement of a non-compete and the strategic considerations involved with initiating non-compete litigation. In particular, it discusses:

Best practices for investigating a suspected violation and gathering relevant evidence.

Key steps for evaluating the likelihood a court will enforce a non-compete.

Factors to consider before initiating legal action.

The options for enforcing a non-compete through legal action and the key decisions relevant to each option.

On September 19, 2018, the New York Attorney General (“NYAG”) released a Frequently Asked Questions document (“FAQ”) regarding non-compete agreements in New York. The FAQ posits and answers the following basic questions about non-competes:

What is a non-compete agreement?

Are non-competes legal?

Do I have to sign a non-compete?

How could a non-compete affect me?

How do employers enforce non-competes?

In addition, the FAQ advises employees on specific steps to take before signing a non-compete, as well as actions employees can take if they signed a non-compete and are contemplating leaving their job. The FAQ concludes by emphasizing the NYAG’s efforts to end overly broad non-competes for rank-and-file employees who do not have access to trade secrets or confidential information, noting several recent settlements in this space and legislation introduced by the NYAG that would prohibit non-competes for workers earning below $75,000 per year (which is still pending).

The publication of the FAQ is not only a useful resource to employers and employees alike, but also another notable development in the close scrutiny that state attorneys general, nationwide, are applying to non-compete agreements.

We just published an article with Thomson Reuters Practical Law discussing garden leave provisions in employment agreements as an alternative or a companion to traditional employee non-compete agreements. With Thomson Reuters Practical Law’s permission, we have attached it here.

On Monday, attorneys general in eleven states, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois, revealed that they are investigating several prominent fast food franchisors for their potential use of no-poaching or non-compete agreements restricting the ability of low wage workers to obtain a better-paying job with another franchise. To that end, these attorneys general have propounded document and information requests to these restaurants, returnable August 6, 2018.

In the Illinois AG’s press release, Attorney General Madigan stated that “No-poach agreements trap workers in low-wage jobs and limit their ability to seek promotion into higher-paying positions within the same chain of restaurants.” Madigan claims that at least 58 percent of major franchisors have no-poach provisions in their franchise agreements. This is not the first time that the Illinois AG has taken aim at non-compete agreements. Over two years ago, Madigan’s office sued sandwich chain Jimmy John’s for employing what it deemed “highly restrictive non-compete agreements,” ultimately reaching a $100,000 settlement with the franchisor. Ten months after Illinois passed the Freedom to Work Act, which prohibits private sector employers from requiring non-compete covenants of low-wage employees, defined as the greater of the applicable federal, state, or local minimum wage (currently $7.25 under federal law and $8.25 under Illinois state law) or $13 per hour, Madigan sued a national payday lender for requiring its employees, including workers who earn less than $13 an hour, to sign a non-compete agreement as a condition of employment.

Illinois is not the only state to pursue non-compete reform. Several other states recently have enacted legislation curbing the use of non-competes with respect to certain categories of workers, such as certified nurse practitioners and midwives (New Mexico) and workers in the broadcasting industry earning under a certain salary (Utah). Other states have proposed similar legislation. For example, New Hampshire bill SB 423 would ban non-compete agreements with “low-wage employees.” On the other end of the spectrum, Vermont House Bill 556 and Pennsylvania House Bill 1938 would ban all non-competes other than those formed in connection with the sale of an ownership interest in a business entity or the dissolution of a partnership or limited liability company. Even if these bills ultimately fail, they signal a rising trend of state-level restrictive covenant reform, which will likely gain momentum as state attorneys general step up enforcement in this area.

Legislative efforts to limit or ban the use of non-compete provisions in employment agreements have proliferated in the early months of 2018.

Perhaps most eye-catching was legislation (titled the “Workforce Mobility Act”) introduced in the U.S. Senate in late April 2018 that would prohibit employers from enforcing or threatening to enforce non-compete agreements with employees and require employers to post prominently a notice that such agreements are illegal. Co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Chris Murphy (CT), Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Ron Wyden (OR), the bill envisions the Department of Labor enforcing the non-compete ban by levying fines on employers of $5,000 for each week that a violation of the Act occurs. The bill also provides for a private right of action for workers to pursue damages in federal court. A companion bill was introduced in the House of Representatives. If enacted into law, the Workforce Mobility Act would have sweeping effects in the workforce.

Efforts by state legislatures to curb non-competes have continued apace, but such bills generally are drafted with more limited scope than the Workforce Mobility Act bill. For example, on May 10, 2018, the New Jersey Assembly Labor Committee advanced Assembly Bill A1769, which would bar the use of non-compete agreements with respect to certain types of workers (mostly low-wage workers), and set a one year limit on employee non-compete agreements with respect to employees who are terminated by a company.

Massachusetts legislators have long tried (unsuccessfully so far) to enact legislation restricting non-competes, and they are at it again. On April 17, 2018, Massachusetts House Bill 4419 was introduced, and it seeks, among other things, to prohibit enforcement of non-competes against certain low-wage employees, to limit the geographic and temporal scope of non-competes, and to require employers to provide advance notice to prospective employees if entering into a non-compete is a condition of employment.

Earlier this year, Utah and Idaho passed or amended their statutes dealing with post-employment restrictions on competition. Colorado passed new limitations on non-competes involving physicians.

Employers should stay aware of these legislative efforts regarding non-competes, as they could, if enacted, invalidate some or all of the employers’ non-competition provisions with their employees. In evaluating that possibility, employers should consider whether they are adequately protecting their legitimate business interests in their trade secrets and client relationships through other means as well, such as confidentiality/non-disclosure, non-solicitation agreements, and/or “garden leave” provisions. As Ben Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Two western states, Utah and Idaho, have recently passed or amended their statutes dealing with post-employment restrictions on competition. This continues a national trend in which new state law in this area is increasingly the product of legislative action rather than judicial interpretation. Thus, even if an employer has no current presence in these states, it is worth one’s time to understand these changes because they could soon be coming your way.

In Utah, the legislature amended the two-year old Post-Employment Restrictions Act (which we had written about before) to limit the enforcement of non-compete agreements against employees in the broadcasting industry. The statute (HB 241) imposes a compensation test that precludes non-competes for broadcast industry employees making less than $47,476 annually, limits broadcast company employment contracts to four years or less, and nullifies any restriction that would limit competition beyond the original contract expiration date (meaning that an employee with a one year restriction who leaves a broadcast employer three months before contract expiration would have a three-month non-compete rather than a one-year non-compete). The amendment also allows enforcement only if the employee is either terminated “for cause,” or the employee breaches the employment contract “in a manner that results in” his or her separation, curious language that seems to leave unaddressed whether a non-compete can be enforced where a non-breaching employee simply resigns. While this amendment is certainly part of the trend of states (Arizona, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, and New York) having statutes specific to non-compete agreements in the broadcasting industry, it also fits in the broader trend of industry-specific limitations targeting an expanding list of industries and the even broader attack on non-compete agreements more generally.

The Idaho legislature also took action recently by amending its non-compete statute to remove an important pro-employer presumption applicable to non-compete agreements for “key” employees. The Idaho statute, Idaho Code §44-2701 et seq., had since 2016 included a provision (§44-2704(6)) providing that an employer would be entitled to a rebuttable presumption of irreparable harm when a key employee found that employer likely to succeed on its claim that the employee had violated the covenant. The legislature, in S 1287a, repealed that provision, restoring Idaho law to its pre-2016 status, as Idaho’s governor noted in his statement concerning the bill. The governor did not sign the bill, but simply allowed it to become law without his signature. He stated that he refrained from signing the bill because there was “no consensus” in the business community or the tech sector on such agreements, and went on to note that the next session of the legislature should re-adopt a modified version of the presumption provision just jettisoned. As in Utah, this legislative back-and-forth illustrates the continued attention states are paying to non-compete issues in political, rather than judicial, forums.

We just published an article with Thomson Reuters Practical Law discussing non-compete agreements between employers and employees for private employers in Illinois. With Thomson Reuters Practical Law’s permission, we have attached it here.

In managing workforces, particularly when addressing employee turnover, employers often find themselves facing issues regarding how best to safeguard their confidential business information and how to protect their relationships with clients and employees. In recent years, the legal landscape underlying these issues has been evolving, as lawmakers and judges grapple with the tension in these matters between protection and free competition.

In this Take 5, we examine recent developments, both in the courts and legislative bodies, concerning trade secrets and employee mobility:

This webinar will provide insights into recent developments and expected trends in the evolving legal landscape of trade secrets and non-competition agreements. This webinar will focus on how to navigate this continually developing area and effectively protect client relationships and proprietary information.

Topics will include:

A review of recent developments and litigation trends under the Defend Trade Secrets (DTSA) since its enactment in 2016.

Newly passed state statutes addressing restrictive covenants, including who can enter into them, industry restrictions, and temporal restrictions.

Increased usage of “garden leave” clauses in lieu of non-competes.

Recent decisions regarding restrictive covenants, including whether a LinkedIn “invitation to link” is an improper solicitation.

Significant recent trade secret cases, including the level of detail required when pleading the existence of a trade secret.